End of the decade

A new decade begins tomorrow, and a whole lot has happened since then. I am pretty sure there is no way I'd think I'd be where I am now. I don't know if I'd be disappointed or not, probably too shocked to think anything about it either way. I'm going to attempt to recap here, and it will probably be more detailed in the early years because starting in about 2004 my life can pretty much be summarized by saying there was a lot of swimming, biking and running. I'm doing this more for me than anything, so don't bother reading if you get bored easy.

I was 20 years old when this decade started. We had a huge millennium party with family and friends and it is probably the last time I stayed up until 4am for New Year's. My first memory of this decade was at about 3am when we were returning to the food spread, and my cousin Trip wanted some meatballs from the crockpot, except there were no toothpicks left. He asked how he was supposed to get at them, and my mother responded, "Like this," and proceeded to dip her hand into the marinara sauce and scoop up a handful of meatballs. Yep, that's how it all started.

I was a junior in college, a basketball player and a film major taking awesome classes like comedy writing and acting for non-performance majors. I scored my 1000th point for the Emerson basketball team, was the top shot-blocker in the NCAA and got invited to pro basketball camp. I opted not to attend, because being pretty good in your Division III league is a far cry from being good against you know, real basketball players. Oh yeah, that was also the one time I ever got a call from Sports Illustrated. Unfortunately, I was later deemed unworthy to appear in the faces in the crowd.

I turned 21 that summer while staying in Cape Cod and working on an independent movie with some friends and an interesting cast of characters. And even though my role was mainly that of crew, it also contains my one acting role which included four words and one irritated look. We rarely really worked on the movie but I did get a board and learn to surf. In case you're wondering, my first drink was a mud slide at this Chinese restaurant that was pretty much the only place open in town besides Wendy's. I had two sips and let someone else finish it. I've never been much of a drinker.

To start my senior year I boarded American Airlines flight 11 on a Tuesday morning in September... of 2000, one year before that flight crashed into the World Trade Center. All I can say is that it is a good thing I was too tall in first grade to be held back. I interned at a couple of production companies and made a whole lot of photo copies of scripts and spent every Saturday surfing at Huntington Beach. I saw Sting get his star on the Hollywood walk of fame, but mostly while I was in Los Angeles I just got really, really fat. Like, fatter than I had ever been even though I was already pretty fat to begin with.

New Year's Day 2001 I jumped into the cold Atlantic Ocean in Boston, insulated by an incredible amount of body fat and finally ready to change that for good. It was when I actually started running on purpose. Just a mile at a time to start, but to me that was a big deal. I decided that maybe, just maybe I didn't need to drink a Pepsi with every meal, and it was probably not necessary to eat so much fried crap. I lost 20 pounds in my final semester, finished out my college basketball career losing in the first round of the playoffs and fouling out of my final game, probably the 4th time in my entire basketball career that I ever fouled out (total crap, too) Our practices that year were held at a local mental institution. I wish Emerson had a gym when I was there.

I graduated college, completely lost as to what to do next. I mean, I was ready to not be in college anymore, not live in a dorm, not have 3am fire alarms and treks down 11 flights of stairs to stand on Boylston Street in my pajamas freezing to death, but I wasn't ready for what was next. (hint: nobody is) I found out that the best thing about not being in college anymore is that when you are tired at night, you can just go to bed. No studying, no papers to write, just good night. My two best graduation presents were rock climbing, from my parents, and skydiving, from my sister. Both were tons of fun but I have to wonder if they were trying to kill me.

I bought my first car (which I still have and it's still just fine) I worked at the front desk at a gym, kept up with my running and started taking spin classes and continued losing weight. I was a full time ski instructor during the warmest winter ever, mostly teaching kids how to avoid skiing over the grass on the slopes. I lost two kids off the chairlift, but both were just fine. I lost 30 more pounds on top of the first 20, and then slowly got rid of another 10 once spring rolled around and I decided to sign up for my first tri, started riding a road bike with my dad, and started swimming.

I did my first running race, also probably the worst weather ever for a race to date for me: combination of pouring rain and slushy snow in the middle of May. I did my first sprint tri, had to walk a bit during the run, did my first Timberman and walked a lot of that run since I was not only completely unprepared, but it was about 95 degrees out and I was so late in crossing the finish line that there was hardly any food left.

My niece was born, and a month later I moved to Los Angeles to give my film career a shot. I was an intern again for a while, again making lots of copies of scripts before landing my first paying gig as a production assistant on a TV movie called the Pennsylvania Miner's Story. My amazing responsibility was to supply water gear to the crew while they shot scenes inside the water tank. But it was still kind of fun, and I got to meet some interesting people.

I saw Kermit the Frog get his star on the walk of fame (and yes, they still maintained the whole illusion that he was an actual frog and not a puppet) and got another job working on this movie The Rundown with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Seann William Scott (Stiffler from American Pie) and Rosario Dawson. My production assistant job on that one mostly consisted of getting blueberries and yogurt for the Rock in the morning (but never actually giving them to him, only to his assistant) writing down when the union guys went to lunch, and standing in the behind buildings on the set wearing a breath mask for the fires to make sure nobody walked through the shot while they blew stuff up. It was also on that set that I learned that movie cattle really have no interest at all in stampeding, no matter what the director says.

Even though it was great spending my weekends riding up and down the PCH through Malibu, I decided that LA wasn't for me, and I moved home and started working for my father's construction company, somehow getting stuck in accounts payable when I filled in for someone on maternity leave who decided never to come back. I signed up for some more triathlons and started training more. I also appeared on a reality TV show, a fact I forgot until I started writing this. That's right, I was on an episode of A Wedding Story. Not mine, of course, but my friend Heather's since I was a bridesmaid. So yeah, I was on TV in a fancy dress, of all things.

I did some more triathlons and signed up for my first Ironman and became obsessed with that. And really since then it has been mostly triathlon-related stuff. Eleven Ironman starts, ten finishes, 4 Kona qualifiers, one winter spent living and training in Phoenix, one Ironman win, one full-page ad in Triathlete magazine, a bunch of other triathlons, some new injuries, leaving the office work life behind, hopefully for good, coaching, and, well, we'll see what happens next.

All I know is that waking up on the first day of this decade as a chubby college kid with dreams of working in the movie industry I'm pretty sure I didn't think that ten years later I'd be a (sort of) fit person (or will be once I get off the off-season weight, even if I am probably 40 pounds lighter than I was then) who exercises 4 hours a day, races triathlons and coaches some athletes. Who knows where I'll be in another 10 years?